page_title: Animal husbandry
section_title: Birth of husbandry
hierarchical_section_title: Animal husbandry / History / Birth of husbandry
caption_attribution_description: English: Fat tailed sheep, Afghanistan, 1976
context_page_description: Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, eggs, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding and the raising of livestock.
  Husbandry has a long history, starting with the Neolithic revolution when animals were first domesticated, from around 13,000 BC onwards, antedating farming of the first crops. By the time of early civilisations such as ancient Egypt, cattle, sheep, goats and pigs were being raised on farms.
  Major changes took place in the Columbian Exchange when Old World livestock were brought to the New World, and then in the British Agricultural Revolution of the 18th century, when livestock breeds like the Dishley Longhorn cattle and Lincoln Longwool sheep were rapidly improved by agriculturalists such as Robert Bakewell to yield more meat, milk, and wool.
  A wide range of other species such as horse, water buffalo, llama, rabbit and guinea pig are used as livestock in some parts of the world. Insect farming, as well as aquaculture of fish, molluscs, and crustaceans, is widespread.
  Modern animal husbandry relies on production systems adapted to the type of land available.
context_section_description: The domestication of livestock was driven by the need to have food on hand when hunting was unproductive. The desirable characteristics of a domestic animal are that it should be useful to the domesticator, should be able to thrive in his or her company, should breed freely, and be easy to tend.
  Domestication was not a single event, but a process repeated at various periods in different places. Sheep and goats were the animals that accompanied the nomads in the Middle East, while cattle and pigs were associated with more settled communities.
  The first wild animal to be domesticated was the dog. Half-wild dogs, perhaps starting with young individuals, may have been tolerated as scavengers and killers of vermin, and being naturally pack hunters, were predisposed to become part of the human pack and join in the hunt. Prey animals, sheep, goats, pigs and cattle, were progressively domesticated early in the history of agriculture.
  Pigs were domesticated in Mesopotamia around 13,000 BC, and sheep followed, some time between 11,000 and 9,000 BC. Cattle were domesticated from the wild aurochs in the areas of modern Turkey and Pakistan around 8,500 BC.
  A cow was a great advantage to a villager as she produced more milk than her calf needed, and her strength could be put to use as a working animal, pulling a plough to increase production of crops, and drawing a sledge, and later a cart, to bring the produce home from the field. Draught animals were first used about 4,000 BC in the Middle East, increasing agricultural production immeasurably. In southern Asia, the elephant was domesticated by 6,000 BC.
  Fossilised chicken bones dated to 5040 BC have been found in northeastern China, far from where their wild ancestors lived in the jungles of tropical Asia, but archaeologists believe that the original purpose of domestication was for the sport of cockfighting.
  Meanwhile, in South America, the llama and the alpaca had been domesticated, probably before 3,000 BC, as beasts of burden and for their wool. Neither was strong enough to pull a plough which limited the development of agriculture in the New World.
  Horses occur naturally on the steppes of Central Asia, and their domestication, around 3,000 BC in the Black Sea and Caspian Sea region, was originally as a source of meat; use as pack animals and for riding followed. Around the same time, the wild ass was being tamed in Egypt. Camels were domesticated soon after this, with the Bactrian camel in Mongolia and the Arabian camel becoming beasts of burden. By 1000 BC, caravans of Arabian camels were linking India with Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean.
caption: The domestication of ruminants, like these fat-tailed sheep in Afghanistan, provided nomads across the Middle East and central Asia with a reliable source of food.
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